The story so far…

On May 30, I’ll hit my five year anniversary at work, and get to pick out a shiny new watch. Not a $50 souvenir watch, but an honest-to-goodness fancy watch. For the past 2-3 months, I’ve been obsessively reading watch forums, sending away for watch catalogs, and memorizing Wristwatch Annual 2008. I have about six weeks left to make my final selection.

Since a frequent post in the forums is “What watch should I get?”, I thought it might be helpful to others if I chronicled my decision process.

At the moment, my leading contender is the IWC Aquatimer Chronograph in titanium. However, I’m also seriously considering the Omega 300M Chrono Diver, Ebel 1911 Discovery, Bell & Ross BR01-94, and the Tag Heuer Link Chronograph. And then there’s the recently announced Breitling SuperOcean Heritage Chronograph, for which no price is yet known.

Some of my observations so far:

• Too many of the watch companies create really annoying Flash-based websites. They’re slow, tedious to navigate, and don’t allow you to bookmark specific pages. Flash is evil.
• Almost all of the watches I list above use the same base movement. So the wide variations in pricing are basically for the case and brand.